Ten years ago tonight, I was attending a birthday party for my sister at a local restaurant. When I returned home, I logged on and found a report that Diana had been "seriously hurt" in a car accident in Paris. I turned on the television and there was a shocking newstream at the bottom of the screen: "Diana...DEAD." On the screen were the now familiar pictures of the crushed car in the Paris tunnel and the hushed voice of the news person from the BBC, making the grim announcement. I was stunned. For some strange reason, I felt like a relative had died, unexpectedly.

One thing that I thought was ironic... on the day of Diana's wedding to Prince Charles, I had a visitor from Scotland in my home. We got up very early to watch the wedding festivities. My Scottish friend made all kinds of fun of the Queen's hat. She thought Diana would make a wonderful Queen and that Charles was far too old and ugly for her. On the day of Diana's funeral, a friend who hails from England came to our house to watch the ceremony. He and his wife arrived around 4 am and we sat in our living room with several boxes of Kleenex on a table in front of us, crying our hearts out. We took great, big, gulping swallows of coffee and tea and really wallowed in mournful misery.

Don't ask me why...unless it was the sadness of those tolling bells, the young princes left motherless, the sense of something good having gone from the world, the beautiful Westminster, the finality of death, regardless of who had died, the music, Elton John's beautiful song, and the coffin itself, knowing that inside it was someone who had been born an aristocrat but who didn't seem to be from that world. It did seem at the time that we'd all lost a close relative. Probably the power of the msm...the msm of 1997. Wow...what ten years can bring about...

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

Hadn't thought of her until this 10 year anniversary. The PM thing is intriguing.

There's a lot of speculation of what she might have become. My fantasy of her goes along with what I have read of her in the months prior to her death:

Quote:

... in her final months Diana felt more alive to the potential of her public role than ever before.

Get this about her and former PM Blair:

Quote:

...At the time, she was hugely excited about Prime Minister Tony Blair's election win in May. She believed he had a role in mind for her as a bona-fide humanitarian ambassador for Britain.

She died before the PNAC wars, but I have to believe that she would have been highly disappointed with Blair. She might have been one of Britain's loudest opponents to war.

She could have been a contender:

Quote:

"She wanted professional fulfillment," Conran told me. "She wanted to do something herself that would show she wasn't an idiot."

Diana's privately nurtured last project — which she hoped would be in partnership with a British TV company — was to produce documentaries, modeled on the much acclaimed BBC film of her trip to Angola that highlighted her land-mine campaign.

She had asked friends to seek out a media coach to help improve her broadcast skills so she could front the documentaries herself. She had already chosen the subject for her next campaign: adult illiteracy.

Would she have pulled off her evolution to an independent woman of real influence on the world's stage? My guess is she would have.

I mean that's my idea of her. Who knows, she could have ended up as another Hillary.

Diana would've probably been very much against the war and I think she would've visited Iraq and welcomed home those British troops who are pulling out of Iraq now.

What she would've actually become, I have no idea. Perhaps an Ambassador. Tony Blair would've used her in some respects, I'm sure, but I doubt that she would've allowed him to dictate to her. She'd had enough of that, and she would've dropped Dodi F. within a few months of their summer fling. I think she would've married again, eventually....probably to some older diplomat-type.

While many people see her now more as a "piece of fluff," I always thought she would've evolved into a very wise and mature woman as she approached and entered into her forties. She would've lobbied for peace and probably been very, very effective in promoting it.

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

While many people see her now more as a "piece of fluff," I always thought she would've evolved into a very wise and mature woman as she approached and entered into her forties. She would've lobbied for peace and probably been very, very effective in promoting it.

"Many people" are twits.

So many people with substance are pushed to the side because people with more greed and less heart don't care to deal with them.